Is Your Sales Funnel Starving?
Here’s something I didn’t fully grasp when I launched my first product:
Not everyone is your customer.
Now I wasn’t expecting EVERYONE who signed up for my email list to buy my book.
But deep down, I kinda thought I could convince MOST of them.
What I learned, though, is that the real world works something like this:
10,000 people visit your website.
If you’re doing a really good job, you’ll coax of them 500 to sign up for your email list.
You’ll never hear from the other 95% again.
Of those 500 new subscribers, maybe 10-15 will be interested enough to buy your product right now.
And another 85 might be interested in buying your product someday, if the stars align just right.
The other 80% of your list will probably never buy.
Now the numbers WILL vary a bit depending on your audience, the price of your product, and your skill as a marketer.
But the pattern itself is written in stone—it’s a law of nature.
This is really important.
I see a lot of new entrepreneurs who are really frustrated because they’re not making many sales, and they think that the answer is to study up on “ninja” copywriting tricks…
When in reality the best copywriting in the world wouldn’t help them because they’re just not bringing enough people into their funnel to begin with.
I suspect that’s part of what is frustrating our friend Jesus, the Ruby programmer whose sales have tanked.
His email list isn’t growing very fast right now, and I’m willing to bet that his sales funnel is starving for traffic.
When you know that you have a product people want (because you’ve already made some sales)…
But now you’re getting NOTHING, there’s a good chance that you should focus on getting more traffic.
If you’re only getting 1,000 visits a month to your site, the math for making lots of sales doesn’t work in your favor.
When I coach entrepreneurs in his position, what I recommend is finding just 1-2 ways to CONSISTENTLY bring in more traffic.
The problem most people face isn’t that it’s hard to get traffic.
It’s that there are literally a million different possibilities:
- Google AdWords
- Facebook ads
- Content marketing (aka “blogging)
- Guest blogging
- Cold email outreach
- Facebook groups
- LinkedIn groups
And on and on.
The key here is the word “consistently.”
What most entrepreneurs do is get distracted.
You try a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and get nowhere.
You DON’T have to use all of them.
You DON’T have to “be everywhere” right now.
You just need to find 1-2 approaches that fit YOU and your business, and work them consistently to “fuel the engine.”
Yesterday Jesus emailed me with an update:
“I wanted to let you know that I literally doubled the size of my list over the last week! It’s at 410 right now, all because a single blog post with an attractive headline that got me 9000 visits.”
To that I say:
Fantastic! Home runs like that are really encouraging.
It sounds like writing blog posts is a great traffic strategy for you and your business.
Run with that. Writing a blog post per week for the next 2 years will be well worth your time.
I’d also pick out 5 of the top blogs that write about Ruby programming (like SitePoint.com) and develop relationships with their editors. Publishing guest posts on huge websites is one of the best ways to extend your reach beyond your current audience.
Once the traffic starts flowing, you’ll see a few email subscribers and sales trickling in…
You’ll start to notice which parts of your sales funnel are working and which are broken.
And you’ll have enough traffic to experiment with different offers and copy.
Then you’re off to the races.